May 20th, 2017 | Redesigning EDGAR

Alex on a morning stroll. The apartment building behind him wasn’t there a year ago! Good heavens they can knock em up fast now. And earthquake proof.

12:30 a.m. Couldn’t sleep. EDGAR’s 1st release progress is bothering me. I’m way behind my initial release time for my 1st commerical robot kit. Since Alexander stopped having the daycare service my valuable spare time has vanished. So I have been only able to progress little by little. And that bothers me alot as I believe EDGAR (Type I: Desktop Bot) could help me get me ahead income wise, especially with the perils ahead due to the upcoming closure of my school in July. I must get EDGAR launched before that deadline so I have an alternative income stream, the electronic kit sales at their current selling rate alone won’t suffice.

So, the race is on. I completed EDGARs exoskeleton design a few days ago. But there seemed to be some power issues on the actual prototype, power didn’t seem to be distributing evenly, particularly to the left sidedrive motor and the right side infered sensor. So I had to modify the design to get power flowing evenly across it’s system. Now it works well. Happy with that, but I need to update my blueprints so I can produce a D.I.Y assembly and instruction manual for future buyers to use. So, on the computer I go and the modification and redesign begins.

3:30 a.m. Got to sleep, have Mia’s class tomorrow, or should I say later today.

7:30 a.m. Got a bit of extra sleep in time, perhaps the morning rain kept Alexander dosile a bit longer. But he was soon up and into full swing.

8:00 a.m. Let Ruby off her charger (I’m calling it “her”? Oh my). Sat and had some coffee from my self-repaired coffee machine while I watched Ruby dutifully vacuuming the floor. Yes, after much bother and considering whether to buy a new one I decided to repair my dead coffee machine. Pitty it didn’t work when mum and dad were here. I wanted them to try my own homemade coffee. But that’s when the damned infernal machine decided to go on the blink. But I thought, wait a sec, I can build robots and I have a coffee machine that’s not working. Come on, what am I thinking about buying a new one? Just repair the thing. So I spent a few hours pulling it apart and seeing what’s up. Turned out in the depths of this beast a simple wire and it’s resistor had died. So I heated up the soldering iron and replaced the defective component. Hey presto! The coffee machine works again. Only took 4 hours. 3.5 hours was to disassemble and reassemble the machine. They don’t make it easy to pull these things apart I can tell you. On purpose of course, so you spend more money on a new one. It’s a throw-a-way world. But not mine. 30 minutes in testing and repair and it was done. Screw you nameless coffee machine company. HAHAHA!

9:00 a.m. Took care of Alexander while Chia cooked his food for the coming week.

9:30 a.m. decided to get Alexander out of the house so we went for a walk to carrefour of course. Stopped to look at the latest high-rise development that has just finished. A year ago the building wasn’t there, now it’s 30 stories high and almost ready to move into. Incredible. And to top that off its earthquake-proof. Of course. Taiwan, like Japan has extremely strict building codes because of Earthquakes. And any building over 12 floors has even more extreme engineering regulations to follow. Most quakes we get here are unnoticeable, however if those same unnoticeable quakes hit an average non-quake city you can be assured of devasying consequences

12:00 p.m. Time to leave to Tainan for Mias class. It started raining halfway to Tainan. Looks like it’s going to be a wet weekend. Cools things down anyway.

1:44 p.m. Arrived in Tainan and as I waited in the lobby of Mia’s apartment building I received a message from Ebay that another Kit has sold. Yes! More, more!

2:00 p.m. Mia’s home schooling class. Today our study and topic of conversation was about Bill Gates. For those reading this in the future who may not know much about 20th and 21st century Earth. Bill Gates was the creator of a disk operating system called “Windows” which became popular in the late 1990s with a version called “Windows 95”. I remember they used a Rolling Stones song to promote it. And television adds ran constantly. Windows became a worldwide success as a computer operating system and made Bill Gates one of the most wealthy people on our planet.

As of time of writing this chronicle Windows 10 is now the dominant PC operating system. Although it is now compwtition from a company that started around the same time called Apple and another system called Android which is the backbone system of almost all hand-held devices like phones and computer tablets. Anyhow Bill Gates is still stinking rich, although he now donates much of his time and fortune to charities and humanitarian organisations.

4:10 p.m. Finished at Mia’s and went to my old medical store in Tainan. I needed a large 850mg can of “Ensure” at a cheaper price. To my luck they had it in stock and it was $50 NT cheaper than in local shops. Great!

6:00 p.m. Arrived home and played with Alexander for a while.

9:00 p.m. Oh great! Received another Electronics Kit order from a different selling service called Etsy. This is my first order thru the Etsy service which is based in Brooklyn, New York City. How exciting. Looks like I got some packaging to do tomorrow.

11:00 p.m. After preparing two kits and doing some more adjustments on Edgar it’s time for bed.